LEAGUE CITY — A 19-year-old woman who reported her mother missing is now charged with killing her after officials found the mother’s decomposing body in a Brazoria County field.
Erin Ashlyn Moffatt, of League City, is in the Lafayette Parrish Sheriff’s Office awaiting extradition to Texas. She is being held on a $250,000 bond and charged with murder.
Her boyfriend, Michael Corey Lewis, is being held on a $100,000 bond, charged with tampering with evidence.
Investigators found Jana Shannon Moffatt, 47, Sept. 15 in a field near state Highway 35 and Greenhouse Road.
An autopsy ruled she had been dead about 10 days and died of strangulation, Galveston County Medical Examiner’s office spokesman John Florence said.
Erin Moffatt reported her mother missing a week earlier, telling League City police officers that her mother left their Calder Road trailer without her car, wallet, purse or medicine.
Police started investigating Jana Moffatt’s disappearance and were tipped off that she might be dead and that her daughter may have fled to Louisiana, League City police spokesman Sgt. John Jordan said.
On Wednesday, police matched up Jana Moffatt’s dental records with the unidentified body in the morgue.
They searched the mobile home the two women shared and found enough evidence to charge Erin Moffatt with her mothers’ slaying, according to a police department news release.
It’s not clear what police found in the home.
Jordan said release of those details could compromise the department’s investigation.
An arrest affidavit, which details what evidence police have before filing charges on the accused, was withheld from The Daily News.
District Attorney Kurt Sistrunk told The Daily News he didn’t have a copy of the affidavit, and League City Police Chief Mike Jez said the newspaper couldn’t have a copy yet.
He said although affidavits are normally open record, the ones for Moffatt’s murder contains information that could jeopardize the investigation.
Jordan said detectives didn’t know what the motive was for the killing.
